Hi, new tankadin here to bother all of you with questions. At the moment there's 2 things I'm wondering about and can't really find a good thread for them. And as it's stated in the title, those 2 are meta gems and professions.

Meta gems. I've been running with an austere primal diamond in mop since that's what most people and websites are suggesting. But is it really worth it? Without a meta gem in my helmet, I'm running with roughly 52052 armor and with one I get a 1050 increase (got another helmet with same armor to compare with). The difference is going from 53,16% to 53,65% phys dmg reduction, is that really worth it over the effulgent primal diamond 2% magic damage reduction?While there are raid fights which doesn't seem to use magic dmg at all, from what I've noticed is that most do have at least a little bit. And if the increase in my phys dmg reduction is already so low, how does armor scale together with SotR and our passive 15% dmg decrease? Same question goes for effulgent on the passive 15% (SotR shouldn't affect it all though).And then there's also the eternal primal diamond, which gives dodge and shield block value increase. I haven't tried using that one, but does the block value increase mean that we'd block for 31% of the dmg instead? That'd be pretty good for a paladin stacking a ton of mastery (like absalom for example), but would it be worth it to switch stam for dodge?

Now on to professions. What in your opinions is the strongest tanking professions in mop? Is it blacksmithing with it's ability to choose between 480 stam and 640 haste/mastery/exp/hit? Or possibly leatherworking with an insane 750 stam (though you do lose 170 mastery)?Personally I'm running mining/engineering, but I've felt that engineering has been really weak and would never suggest anyone to pick it up for tanking. Not only does it give dodge which isn't nearly as useful as what the other professions gives you, but you can't even stack use trinkets with engineering at the same time (at least they're not on the same cd, you just can't use them at the same time). I'm hesitant to switch it out since I've always loved engineering, been running with it for years and have almost every recipe available which includes a couple that are rather annoying to get. But I feel that it's bringing me down quite a bit, which makes me a bit sad.

Sorry for making the profession question a bit of a double question after saying I had 2 questions, but I'm too lazy to rewrite it now. The meta gem question is more important right now anyway.

Keep in mind that going from 53.16% to 53.65% is around 0.5%, but this is effectively 1% of all the damage you take.

Just to give you an easy example, let's assume it takes you from 50.00% to 50.50%.

Say a boss hits you for 200 000 damage. With 50.00% you take 100 000 damage. With 50.50% you take 99 000 damage. That's 1% less of what you would've taken otherwise.

So the question is, roughly 1% physical reduction or 2% spell reduction. You receive a lot more physical reduction than spell reduction, so the armor meta is definitely worth it.

Theck calculated the Dodge/Block meta, and it (dodge and block together) reduces almost as much as the 2% armor does. The 2% armor reduces slightly more, but also provides you with a decent chunk of stamina. Considering the Dodge/Block meta is also unreliable, it is completely out.

As for professions, LW is providing the most stamina, whereas BS provides the most secondary stats. Since BS also gives you the most options for your profession perk, it's really a healthy choice. If epic gems are included at some point in the expansion, BS could become very good. (How did they handle that during Cataclysm? I've missed it.)

It might also be easier for you to level blacksmithing, as you can google what mats you need to level to 600, farm the mats while you still have mining, then drop mining for BS. However, if it's only Stamina you're after, you might as well stick with mining.

Engineering is still quite useful. Remember that while the Dodge has poor itemization if you spread it out, there are a lot of fights where you don't constantly take damage. For example, on most tank switch fights the Engineering perk just became nearly twice as useful. And then there are the extra benefits, such as an Auction House in Seven Stars/Two Moons and having a Jeeves in the raid. (We don't have an engineer in the raid, and the repairs halfway the evening always become a chore to handle. Having someone who can pop a Jeeves would make things so much easier.)

Thank you for the quick answer. From looking Theck's at calculations, the armor meta really does seem to outshine the others by quite a bit. I'm thinking that effulgent might still be worth it on one of the really magic heavy fights like elegon or Lei Shi, but the armor meta seems way stronger overall. It might be worth throwing some gold to switch if you hit a brick wall in progression, I know that we did just that on elegon.

I was rather surprised that block didn't contribute more to dmg reduction on the eternal meta and that the majority came from the dodge. I might check if it'd be worth for someone with much more block than Theck, but considering the fact that most of it's reduction came from dodge, it doesn't seem too likely. It might be worth looking into for the next patch when they drop the new tier. The 2pc is block on wog and ghostcrawler even stated that he was worried we might block cap.

While I use almost all of my holy power on SotR, I do believe that WoG is worth it at least when you have low health and 5 stacks on it. With enough vengeance built up, we can do some insane heals with it. Though with current gear I'm running with around 30% and couldn't really see anyone having more than 40% even if they stacked all mastery. That'd bring us up to 80% after a WoG, but didn't they change it so it checks avoidance first and block second? That'd put the block cap at 102,4% wouldn't it? And if it does, then capping block doesn't seem too likely imo. If I'm completely wrong on the new tier set, feel free to correct me, that's why I'm here asking questions.

As for profession, you're completely right about engineering being stronger in tank switch fights. I hadn't even thought about how many tank switch fights we've actually gotten this time around. Just in ToES it's 3/4 isn't it? With the first boss fight being the only one were we don't switch boss aggro around.

However I do still feel that it's slightly below the other professions, just not as much as I did before. I'll be keeping both my professions for the time being. Blacksmithing isn't really worth the effort of swapping out mining while we're still progressing, stamina is too lucrative atm imho. However as you said, if they add in epic gems, BS might become insanely strong unless they put some form of restriction on it. And something I forgot to add in, we have two engineers in our raid, so putting up a rep bot isn't an issue. I am however the only one that has built jeeves, so the other engineer doesn't have free rep bots yet.

On the subject of the new tier, how does it stand up to the current bonuses? In my opinion the current 4pc looks really strong (don't have 4 myself yet so haven't tested it out) And I really do like the current 2pc, since it gives me even more active mitigation. Will the extra holy power from the new tier 4pc be just as strong the old 4pc? And might it be worth throwing more WoG in the future?

Even if the Dodge/Block meta would outweight the Armor meta, it would still be less reliable. The Armor meta applies to every single physical attack. And it has bonus Stamina on top. The Spell damage reduction meta is worth it on magic heavy fights, so you might want to switch metas for that, or simply pop one in your second to best helmet.

For Tier 14, the 4 piece is a bit lackluster. Sure, AD can be nice at times, but not for the general DR it gives. How often does it happen that you need the cheat death ability twice in a row more than two minutes apart but less than 3 minutes apart?

The Tier 15 set bonuses are weird. They add mechanics to abilities that are totally unrelated to the mechanic, totally changing how we will use these abilities, especially WoG, so which abilities you use when depends on whether how many tier pieces you have. The WoG set bonus might be that good that we keep it around during tier 16.

As for WoG, the norm is not to pop it when you hit the 5 stacks of BoG, but to just sit on those stacks, and keep it in reserve for when you really need a big heal. When you receive enough vengeance, that heal will heal you for practically full health. However, if we now start using WoG to keep a buff up, that means we lose out that emergency heal, leaving us with only LoH once per five minutes.

Item - Paladin T15 Protection 4P Bonus (New) You gain 1 Holy Power for each 0% of your health taken as damage while Divine Protection is active.Item - Monk T15 Brewmaster 4P Bonus (New) Each time you take damage from Stagger, you have a 10% chance to make your next Purifying Brew cost no Chi.Item - Death Knight T15 Blood 4P Bonus (New) Your Bone Shield ability grants you 15 Runic Power each time one of its charges is consumed.Item - Warrior T15 Protection 4P Bonus (New) Your abilities generate 50% more Rage when used against targets afflicted by Demoralizing Shout.Item - Druid T15 Guardian 4P Bonus (New) You generate 0% more Rage from your attacks while Enrage is active.

I really don't know nothing about how monks work, but it seems all the 4 piece set bonuses help on providing extra resources.

Now as for the two set bonuses, DKs gain a little easier access to their selfheal. Warriors and Druids are getting a boost to their heal which is not that different from how BoG works for us, while they're basically making us choose between ignoring our set bonus and keeping our BoG, or dropping BoG in favor of extra block chance. I hope they'll change that around somewhat.

Oh, and it might help to start new threads when you bring up new topics. It really makes discussions easier to follow, and allows others to find appropriate topics a little easier.

Sorry, you're right, I should have made a new thread. I'm guessing it's a bit late for that now though. I think I did it because when I started writing it, it was a continuation on which meta gem was the strongest, but guess my mind wandered off a bit.

I would like to point out that AD is the 2pc, not the 4pc. The tier 14 4pc is the buff to SotR, 10% more on both the heal and dmg reduction of SotR. I've looked it up now, and the bonus is multiplicative for the SotR buff. Meaning that if you have 50% dmg reduction, it'll become 55%. However that's still really strong since we're trying to keep SotR up at all times.

AD cd reduction is the 2pc on the current set, which would have been quite lackluster for a 4pc set bonus, but I find it decent for what it is. The cheat death ability on it is really neat, but you should avoid dying anyway so I personally find that it's a bit better to use it for the general DR when you know spikes of dmg is coming. And I as I said, I like that it gives us more active mitigation which is always nice. Being able to have 20% dmg reduction 1/12 of the boss fight instead of 1/18 isn't that bad (that is if you cast it immediatly it's ready though, which I don't atm). And remember what was brought up earlier on the topic of professions, there are a lot of tank switch fights in mop, meaning that you'll have it up for more than that during the time you have aggro.

And I'm sorry if I was misunderstood on the part about using WoG in current tier. Just as you say, I sit on it until I'm low on hp. What I meant was that I find that it's usually worth using it once instead of another SotR if you've already been brought down to low hp, but only when you have 5 stacks of BoG. Otherwise SotR always takes main priority for holy power usage.

Comparing tier 15 WoG bonus to AD is rather pointless, since as you said, would put the tier 15 bonus way above tier 14. But would the WoG bonus really be better than 10% buff to SotR if that's our main ability for dmg reduction? I guess I should have pointed out a bit more clearly which bonus I was talking about, which was the buff to SotR. Really sorry about that, my mistake.

I should probably have moved the entire question to the 5.2 patch thread.

If you're low on HP, WoG is usually more valuable than SotR. Say you are at 10% health, and WoG will bump you up to 30% health. That allows you to take 3 times as much damage, whereas SotR only allows you to take twice the damage. And if Vengeance is high, you really don't need a stack of 5 BoG to get a good heal off.

Also keep in mind that SotR is physical damage only. If you find your health not that adequate right before an Elegon breath, for example, WoG will be much more useful than SotR.